Jamie and I were strolling through The Grove the other night, and found ourselves at Barnes and Noble. We stumbled upon an amazing book that we instantly knew had to be added to our collection. The full name of the book is “Over 360 of the Most Popular Retrofonts from the 19th and 20th Centuries Typedesign”, or Retrofonts for short. Actually, the book is written by a German man (Gregor Stawinski), so the official title is “Über 400 der beliebtesten Retrofonts aus zwei Jahrhunderten Typedesign”, but enough with titles.
This book is the most comprehensive, extensive, and organized visual dictionary of type design I’ve ever seen. There are 560 pages of typefaces arranged in chronological order. Each font showcases all of the characters, the designer, and where you can find the font online. The chapters are separated by era and each start with historical, political, and cultural contexts. To top it all off, 222 of the 360 fonts are included on a CD copyright free! That was the icing on the cake that did us in.
If you’re a graphic designer, I highly recommend that you check this book out. We’ve already installed a handful of the fonts that came on the cd and have been playing with them this weekend.
